Software Reliability Categorising and specifying the reliability of software systems

Objectives To discuss the problems of reliability specification and measurement To introduce reliability metrics and to discuss their use in reliability specification To describe the statistical testing process To show how reliability predications may be made from statistical test results

Topics covered Definition of reliability Reliability and efficiency Reliability metrics Reliability specification Statistical testing and operational profiles Reliability growth modelling Reliability prediction

What is reliability? Probability of failure-free operation for a specified time in a specified environment for a given purpose This means quite different things depending on the system and the users of that system Informally, reliability is a measure of how well system users think it provides the services they require

Software reliability Cannot be defined objectively Reliability measurements which are quoted out of context are not meaningful Requires operational profile for its definition The operational profile defines the expected pattern of software usage Must consider fault consequences Not all faults are equally serious. System is perceived as more unreliable if there are more serious faults

Failures and faults A failure corresponds to unexpected run-time behaviour observed by a user of the software A fault is a static software characteristic which causes a failure to occur Faults need not necessarily cause failures. They only do so if the faulty part of the software is used If a user does not notice a failure, is it a failure? Remember most users don’t know the software specification

Input/output mapping

Reliability improvement Reliability is improved when software faults which occur in the most frequently used parts of the software are removed Removing x% of software faults will not necessarily lead to an x% reliability improvement In a study, removing 60% of software defects actually led to a 3% reliability improvement Removing faults with serious consequences is the most important objective

Reliability perception

Reliability and formal methods The use of formal methods of development may lead to more reliable systems as it can be proved that the system conforms to its specification The development of a formal specification forces a detailed analysis of the system which discovers anomalies and omissions in the specification However, formal methods may not actually improve reliability

Reliability and formal methods The specification may not reflect the real requirements of system users A formal specification may hide problems because users don’t understand it Program proofs usually contain errors The proof may make assumptions about the system’s environment and use which are incorrect

Topics covered Definition of reliability Reliability and efficiency Reliability metrics Reliability specification Statistical testing and operational profiles Reliability growth modelling Reliability prediction

Reliability and efficiency As reliability increases system efficiency tends to decrease To make a system more reliable, redundant code must be includes to carry out run-time checks, etc. This tends to slow it down

Reliability and efficiency Reliability is usually more important than efficiency No need to utilise hardware to fullest extent ( erdvė) as computers are cheap and fast Unreliable software isn't used Hard to improve unreliable systems Software failure costs often far exceed system costs Costs of data loss are very high

Topics covered Definition of reliability Reliability and efficiency Reliability metrics Reliability specification Statistical testing and operational profiles Reliability growth modelling Reliability prediction

Reliability metrics Hardware metrics not really suitable for software as they are based on component failures and the need to repair or replace a component once it has failed. The design is assumed to be correct Software failures are always design failures. Often the system continues to be available in spite of the fact that a failure has occurred.

Reliability metrics Probability of failure on demand This is a measure of the likelihood that the system will fail when a service request is made POFOD = 0.001 means 1 out of 1000 service requests result in failure Relevant for safety-critical or non-stop systems Rate of fault occurrence (ROCOF) Frequency of occurrence of unexpected behaviour ROCOF of 0.02 means 2 failures are likely in each 100 operational time units Relevant for operating systems, transaction processing systems

Reliability metrics Mean time to failure Availability Measure of the time between observed failures MTTF of 500 means that the time between failures is 500 time units Relevant for systems with long transactions e.g. CAD systems Availability Measure of how likely the system is available for use. Takes repair/restart time into account Availability of 0.998 means software is available for 998 out of 1000 time units Relevant for continuously running systems e.g. telephone switching systems

Reliability measurement Measure the number of system failures for a given number of system inputs Used to compute POFOD Measure the time (or number of transactions) between system failures Used to compute ROCOF and MTTF Measure the time to restart after failure Used to compute AVAIL

Time units Time units in reliability measurement must be carefully selected. Not the same for all systems Raw execution time (for non-stop systems) Calendar time (for systems which have a regular usage pattern e.g. systems which are always run once per day) Number of transactions (for systems which are used on demand)

Failure consequences Reliability measurements do NOT take the consequences of failure into account Transient ( trumpalaikis) faults may have no real consequences but other faults may cause data loss or corruption and loss of system service May be necessary to identify different failure classes and use different measurements for each of these

Topics covered Definition of reliability Reliability and efficiency Reliability metrics Reliability specification Statistical testing and operational profiles Reliability growth modelling Reliability prediction

Reliability specification Reliability requirements are only rarely expressed in a quantitative, verifiable way. To verify reliability metrics, an operational profile must be specified as part of the test plan. Reliability is dynamic - reliability specifications related to the source code are meaningless. No more than N faults/1000 lines. This is only useful for a post-delivery process analysis.

Failure classification

Steps to a reliability specification For each sub-system, analyse the consequences of possible system failures. From the system failure analysis, partition failures into appropriate classes. For each failure class identified, set out the reliability using an appropriate metric. Different metrics may be used for different reliability requirements.

Bank auto-teller system Each machine in a network is used 300 times a day Bank has 1000 machines Lifetime of software release is 2 years Each machine handles about 200, 000 transactions About 300, 000 database transactions in total per day

Examples of a reliability spec.

Specification validation It is impossible to empirically validate very high reliability specifications No database corruptions means POFOD of less than 1 in 200 million If a transaction takes 1 second, then simulating one day’s transactions takes 3.5 days It would take longer than the system’s lifetime to test it for reliability

Reliability economics Because of very high costs of reliability achievement, it may be more cost effective to accept unreliability and pay for failure costs However, this depends on social and political factors. A reputation for unreliable products may lose future business Depends on system type - for business systems in particular, modest reliability may be adequate

Costs of increasing reliability

Topics covered Definition of reliability Reliability and efficiency Reliability metrics Reliability specification Statistical testing and operational profiles Reliability growth modelling Reliability prediction

Statistical testing Testing software for reliability rather than fault detection Test data selection should follow the predicted usage profile for the software Measuring the number of errors allows the reliability of the software to be predicted An acceptable level of reliability should be specified and the software tested and amended until that level of reliability is reached

Statistical testing procedure Determine operational profile of the software Generate a set of test data corresponding to this profile Apply tests, measuring amount of execution time between each failure After a statistically valid number of tests have been executed, reliability can be measured

Statistical testing difficulties Uncertainty in the operational profile This is a particular problem for new systems with no operational history. Less of a problem for replacement systems High costs of generating the operational profile Costs are very dependent on what usage information is collected by the organisation which requires the profile Statistical uncertainty when high reliability is specified Difficult to estimate level of confidence in operational profile Usage pattern of software may change with time

An operational profile

Operational profile generation Should be generated automatically whenever possible Automatic profile generation is difficult for interactive systems May be straightforward for ‘normal’ inputs but it is difficult to predict ‘unlikely’ inputs and to create test data for them

Topics covered Definition of reliability Reliability and efficiency Reliability metrics Reliability specification Statistical testing and operational profiles Reliability growth modelling Reliability prediction

Reliability growth modelling Growth model is a mathematical model of the system reliability change as it is tested and faults are removed Used as a means of reliability prediction by extrapolating from current data Depends on the use of statistical testing to measure the reliability of a system version

Equal-step reliability growth

Observed reliability growth Simple equal-step model but does not reflect reality Reliability does not necessarily increase with change as the change can introduce new faults The rate of reliability growth tends to slow down with time as frequently occurring faults are discovered and removed from the software A random-growth model may be more accurate

Random-step reliability growth

Growth models choice Many different reliability growth models have been proposed No universally applicable growth model Reliability should be measured and observed data should be fitted to several models Best-fit model should be used for reliability prediction

Topics covered Definition of reliability Reliability and efficiency Reliability metrics Reliability specification Statistical testing and operational profiles Reliability growth modelling Reliability prediction

Reliability prediction

Key points Reliability is usually the most important dynamic software characteristic Professionals should aim to produce reliable software Reliability depends on the pattern of usage of the software. Faulty software can be reliable Reliability requirements should be defined quantitatively whenever possible

Key points There are many different reliability metrics. The metric chosen should reflect the type of system and the application domain Statistical testing is used for reliability assessment. Depends on using a test data set which reflects the use of the software Reliability growth models may be used to predict when a required level of reliability will be achieved